β

NBCSN

NBCSN is an American digital cable and satellite televisionchannel that is owned by the NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal. It originally launched on July 1, 1995, as the Outdoor Life Network (OLN), which was dedicated to programming primarily involving fishing, hunting, outdoor adventure programs, and outdoor sports. By the turn of the 21st century, OLN became better known for its extensive coverage of the Tour de France, but eventually began covering more "mainstream" sporting events – resulting in its relaunch as Versus in September 2006.

Comcast, the original owner of Versus, acquired a majority stake in NBC Universal in 2011. As a result, Comcast merged the operations of its cable channels with those of NBC. In particular, it aligned the operation of its sports channels with NBC's sports division, NBC Sports. On January 2, 2012, Versus was rebranded as the NBC Sports Network (with the on-air branding later shortened to NBCSN) to reflect these changes. As of September 15, 2014, the majority of NBC Sports' operations, including NBCSN, is based in facilities in Stamford, Connecticut.

As of February 2015, NBCSN is available to approximately 81,578,000 pay television households (70.1% of households with television) in the United States.[1]

Contents

The channel originally launched as the Outdoor Life Network (or OLN) on July 1, 1995; the name was licensed from Outdoor Life magazine. Its programming consisted of hunting, fishing, and outdoor adventure shows. In its early days, the channel reached around one million homes and found most of its carriage via the then-infant platforms of direct broadcast satellite services and digital cable.[2]

In 1999, OLN acquired the U.S. broadcast rights to the Tour de France for US$3 million. Coverage of the Tour on OLN brought substantially greater viewership to the then fledgling channel, due in part to the then-growing popularity of American rider Lance Armstrong. In 2004, where Armstrong would aim for a record-breaking sixth straight Tour de France title, OLN would devote over 344 hours in July to coverage of the Tour, along with documentaries and other original programming surrounding the event – which was promoted through a $20 million advertising campaign.[3]

Overall, while its coverage of the Tour de France helped OLN expand its carriage to over 60 million homes, critics became concerned that OLN's coverage had placed too much of its focus on Armstrong as its main attraction for viewers, and doubted if OLN could sustain itself without the viewership that Lance Armstrong's presence had brought to its coverage.[2] Some critics had jokingly referred to OLN as the "Only Lance Network" due to its overemphasis on the American rider.[4]

Following the 2005Tour (where Armstrong captured his seventh victory in the race, and announced his retirement from cycling afterward), OLN debuted a new lineup of programming – anchored by repeats of the popular reality television seriesSurvivor. OLN's executives believed that bringing Survivor into its lineup would fit well with the new direction it had planned for OLN, and could attract viewership from fans of the show who had watched it on CBS.[5] Around the same period, OLN also acquired the rights to the Dakar Rally, America's Cup, the Boston Marathon, and the Iditarod. OLN planned to cover these multi-day events in a similar style to how it covered the Tour, hoping that its coverage might bring "surprise" results for the channel.[5] Due in part to Lance's absence from the Tour in 2006, its ratings for live coverage of the first four stages of the race drew in 49% fewer viewers than previous years.[4]

In August 2005, ESPN declined to match Comcast's offer, and OLN acquired cable television rights to the NHL beginning in the 2005–2006 season in a three-year deal worth close to $200 million. The new deal would include 58 regular season games on Monday and Tuesday nights, coverage of the NHL All-Star Game, conference finals, and the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals.[6] With the help of its new NHL package, by June 2006, OLN had now reached 75 million subscribers. However, due in part to OLN's lesser carriage in comparison to ESPN, the NHL's ratings that season had suffered in comparison.[7]

In 2006, OLN broadcast selected games in the Arena Football League's 2006 season. The channel televised a weekly regular-season game for 11 weeks as well as a wild card playoff game.[8] However, the agreement was not renewed and was later picked up by ESPN, who also acquired a minority stake in the league's ownership.[9]

In April 2006, Comcast announced that it would be renaming Outdoor Life Network to Versus in the fall of 2006. As the network had shifted beyond simply "outdoor" programming, the name "Versus" was intended to represent the common element of competition within its lineup.[10] OLN's re-launch as Versus occurred on September 25, 2006.

The channel began airing games from the United Football League in 2009. The first season Championship aired on November 27, 2009. The UFL would return to the channel for a second season in 2010.[citation needed]

On April 5, 2010, Versus debuted The Daily Line, a show consisting of a four-person panel (host Liam McHugh, handicapper Rob DeAngelis, comedian Reese Waters, and Jenn Sterger) who discussed, often with heavy satire, sports-related topics that were popular that day.[21] However, the show was cancelled due to low viewership on November 4, 2010.[22]

The Ultimate Fighting Championship would air two live events on the channel due to the new contract agreement with UFC sister promotion World Extreme Cagefighting. The first edition of UFC on Versus aired on March 21, 2010 headlined by Brandon Vera vs. Jon Jones in the Light Heavyweight division. The second event aired on August 1 with Jon Jones facing Vladimir Matyushenko. Also as part of the agreement with the UFC, several UFC Countdown shows would air. A countdown show aired the week of a pay-per-view event, usually lasting for one hour, and covering 2–3 of the biggest fights on the card. In August 2011, the UFC announced a new broadcasting deal with the channels of rival Fox Sports, which would begin to take effect in November 2011.[23]

Versus had also struck a deal with the NBA to air 10 regular season NBA Development League Saturday night games, as well as six playoff games a year. In total, the channel would air 16 NBA Development League games,[24] in addition to 25 hours of NBA specials.

In February 2011, Comcast acquired a majority stake in NBC Universal, and merged its content operations into the company. As part of the acquisition, Versus and Comcast's other sports channels began to be integrated into the NBC Sports division. Coinciding with the merger, President Jamie Davis was replaced by Comcast Sports Group president Jon Litner. Litner began to oversee the channel, in addition to his other duties following the Comcast takeover.[26]

In March 2011, Versus expanded its college football coverage by becoming the cable partner for NBC's coverage of Notre Dame football, airing replays of Notre Dame games, and the first ever live broadcast of the team's annual spring game. Its coverage began with a marathon of three classic Fighting Irish games on March 17, St. Patrick's Day, to serve as a prelude to its coverage of the spring game.[27]

The logo using the full “NBC Sports Network” name, used from 2012 to just before the 2014 Winter Olympics.

In April 2011, NBC Sports and Versus announced they had reached a ten-year extension to their television contract with the National Hockey League worth nearly $2 billion over the life of the contract. As part of the announcement, Dick Ebersol, the former chairman of NBC Sports, said that Versus would be renamed "within 90 days" in order to reflect the synergy resulting from the merger.[30] However, the announcement of a new name did not come until August 1, 2011, when Comcast announced that Versus would be relaunched as the NBC Sports Network[31] on January 1, 2012. The relaunch coincided with NBC's coverage of the NHL Winter Classic, which took place on the same day.[32]

In an interview with TV Guide, president of programming Jon Miller detailed that NBC Sports Network would be "radically different" from Versus in many ways. His goal was for NBC Sports Network to become a credible "full-service sports network", with a new lineup of sports news and talk programs, and live event coverage. Programming such as Whacked Out Sports and The T.Ocho Show were dropped from the lineup, as Miller thought that low-brow programming would hurt the channel's credibility. The channel began an initiative to begin producing new original programming during the transition as well.[33] NBC also made efforts[34] to expand its current broadcasting relationships and acquire new rights for additional sports events to be broadcast on the channel. In the months leading up to the relaunch, NBC struck deals with Major League Soccer,[35] dropped the UFL,[36] and added coverage of college hockey games.[37]

On June 6, 2011, it was revealed that NBC Sports would extend its rights to the Olympic Games through 2020, outbidding competing bids by Fox Sports and ESPN in a $4.38 billion contract. The network began to participate in NBC's overall coverage beginning at the 2012 Summer Olympics.[32][38][39] Its coverage of the gold medal game between the United States and Japan in women's soccer set a new viewership record for the network, with 4.35 million viewers.[40]

Almost immediately after the rebrand, the shortened moniker "NBCSN" began to be used in TV listings to refer to the network. In July 2013, the network announced its intention to use this abbreviation on an official basis. On August 18, 2013, commentators and graphics began to refer to the network as "NBCSN".[41][42] The change was made to help streamline its branding in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics, by which time the name change was mostly complete.[41]

On September 22, 2013, NBCSN broadcast an episode of Under Wild Skies—a hunting program aired as a time-buy by the National Rifle Association—in which host and NRA lobbyist Tony Makris was shown killing an African elephant on a trip to Botswana. The network was criticized by the media for airing such material; while NBC responded by pulling the episode due to its "objectionable" content and stating that it would be more "aggressive" towards the content of future episodes of the program, Under Wild Skies was pulled from the network entirely after Makris made remarks on an NRA-produced webcast comparing critics of the show to Hitler.[43][44]

WSOF was formed in 2012, having signed a broadcast deal with the NBC Sports Network. This was the third MMA promotion that NBC Sports has hosted, having broadcast World Extreme Cagefighting and Ultimate Fighting Championship events when the channel was formerly known as Versus.[58] NBC Sports had been one of the bidders for the rights to broadcast future UFC events, but lost out to Fox.[59] However, some journalists regarded WSOF's deal with NBC Sports to be a considerable coup for a debuting promotion, considering NBC Sports' past interest in the UFC.[59] Upon the announcement of the broadcast deal, WSOF President Ray Sefo stated that the promotion wanted to host 8-10 events per year, whilst holding a one-year deal with NBC Sports.[60] However, the next day, an NBC spokesman revealed that the deal only covered WSOF's inaugural event, with the option for more, should NBC hold a positive evaluation.[59] On February 4, 2013, it was reported by several news outlets that NBC Sports signed a 3-year deal with WSOF.[61][62]

On July 23, 2013, NBC announced that coverage of NASCAR racing would return to NBC beginning in the 2015 season under a new contract lasting through 2024. The deal includes broadcast rights to the second half of the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series seasons; the majority of which will air on NBCSN.[64][65]

At the beginning of September 2009, DirecTV pulled Versus from its lineup, as it was unable to reach terms on a rate increase demanded by Comcast. In public statements (including a message shown on the channel which formerly carried Versus), DirecTV scolded Comcast for its "unfair and outrageous demands", and considered the company to be "simply piggish" in its demands for higher rates, as it described Versus as "a paid programming and infomercial channel with occasional sporting events."[70] On March 15, 2010, an agreement was reached between the two sides and Versus returned to DirecTV's lineup. The channel was returned to its original package on the service, Choice Xtra.[71] The network has since drastically reduced its paid programming blocks to only three hours deep in late night under NBC management, and that remaining paid programming itself is now often subject to pre-emption with live sports from Asia or Australia and doesn't air at all during Olympic coverage.

A 1080ihigh definition feed of the network was launched in January 2007. Initially, its HD feed was shared with sister network Golf Channel in an arrangement marketed as Versus/Golf HD; Golf Channel programming was broadcast during the daytime hours, and Versus programming was broadcast during the evening and primetime hours with some schedule variation during Tour de France coverage. The shared channel was replaced by individual HD feeds for both channels in December 2008.[72]

In May 2013, the network's standard definition feed was converted to a widescreen presentation with letterboxing to duplicate the display seen on the high definition feed in line with their competitor's presentations of their SD channels.